


The Wonder (Women of a New Age)

by navaan



Category: Agent Carter (TV), DC Cinematic Universe, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Angst, Background Etta Candy/Barbara Ann Minerva, Big Bang Challenge, Bisexuality, Crossover Pairings, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Drama, F/F, Fade to Black, Flirting, Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Porn, Identity Reveal, Illustrated, Kissing, POV Female Character, Past Relationship(s), Romance, Secret Identity, Spies & Secret Agents, World War II, past Diana/Steve Trevor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 08:57:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12767499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: Diana follows her friend Barbara Ann Minerva who vanished ona jungle expedition, but it's only the beginning of trouble that leads her back onto the battlefields of World War II. At the same time Peggy Carter is just getting started.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the [DCU Bang 2017](http://dcu-bang.livejournal.com/). Thank you so much to woad for signing up with me after we talked about Diana/Peggy possibilities last year!! [She made extremely awesome art! LOOK AT HER ETTA AND LOOK AT HER DIANA!!! THAT IS JUST THE GREATEST!!!](https://tinctoriawoad.tumblr.com/post/167663372195/badnewsforetta) Thank you so much for the extremely lovely art and even more for encouraging me to write more of this awesome crossover pair! :D
> 
> Art is embedded, put please go and leave her some nice feedback! This is really just beautiful!!

Diana followed the trail as far as it would go and then pushed through the thick plant life that covered every inch of the jungle. The heat was welcome to her and as much as she had learned to feel at home in the crowded, gray cities humanity had built over the eons - had even learned to see beauty in them - she felt much more at home in this wilderness than she did in the the murky fog of London. Even the humid air, ripe with the song of insects was welcome.

Brushing through the thick brushes, listening to the birds around her, reminded her much of the woods of her childhood. She'd loved running off to the woods of Themiscyra, even though her aunt and mother had warned her that one day she'd be eaten by one of the predators.

She only wished she had come wearing the garb of an Amazon, light and functional. Her dark leather boots creaked and the khaki colored pants scratched against her sweaty skin. But it would not hinder her. Over the years she had become quite used to the clothes and fashions of men's world. And these _were_ the clothes of an explorer. She had chosen them for exactly this kind of endeavor, but they were not as comfortable as the garb of a warrior.

Step by step she made her way deeper into the jungle and all sound, all smells were like they were becoming her on. Nature was telling her "welcome" and she was humming her on little prayer of “hello”.

By the gods, she had missed this.

And despite the dimness of her task a smile stole onto her face.

"I am Diana," she whispered to the animals around herself. "Today I only hunt one prey - a Cheetah. You don't have to flee me. Patrons, guide my steps."

Etta always laughed when she talked like this, addressing her patrons, her pantheon of long lost gods and natural spirits. But like always it seemed that the animals knew her language, like suddenly the sounds, the flight of birds, the running of little feet around her guided her step through the underbrush as much as the unseen paths she was following.

Two days ago she had slipped away, left the expedition that brought her here and had run off to seek the person she had come to bring home: Barbara Ann Minerva. Born to a highly esteemed family of British Nottinghamshire she had made a name for herself - first as headstrong heiress and then as explorer and archaeologist. She was one of the women of the new age adventurous and unwilling to let men dictate what women could and could not do.

And Diana had promised sweet Etta to bring her home to her.

And in Diana's mind that was the only course of action. In her mind Barbara Ann belong to Etta. The two women had shared so much love, had lived together for a long time. Years ago, Etta had introduced them at a meeting of a women's union and Diana and Barbara Ann had shared a common love for history, ancient artifacts and languages. All three of them had spent some time together in this past decade, trying to recover some of the lost artifacts of long lost civilizations.

But this had not been their only trade.

All of them had lived their own double lives of espionage and military service at one time or another.

Diana had left her peaceful home of Themiscyra to fight Ares. She had not know then that she was the famed god-killer or that she was meant to kill Ares because they were of one blood. She had known love then, but she had not understood war when she'd set out to do her duty as an Amazon at the side of an American spy who had been so involved in the war that he had forgotten what peace was supposed to look like.

They had learned much from each other.

Even now, so many years later, the thought of Steve Trevor brought pain, the intense feeling of loss.

She had loved him.

For the short moment time had allowed them, she had loved him.

And despite all his hardened talk of espionage and pragmatism, he had sacrificed himself for peace. Diana had been left behind to cherish his memory.

It hurt. It still hurt.

While Diana hadn't aged, hadn't changed outwardly, her failure to save him was one of her greatest regrets. Not least of all because even though she had done her part and killed Ares the world had already fallen into the next war now.

The news from Europe was getting more and more desperate each day and it seemed like the graves slight to Steve's memory.

And yet, Diana was out here and not on European battle fields restoring peace.

This war wasn't her duty. Ares was. Humanity was. Love was.

Under Etta's guidance she had navigated the world for nearly two decades. She had tried to do what she could without calling too much attention to herself and her origin. Like this she had lived and learned about this new world she'd been thrust into, among them as equal. And so she followed in the footsteps of Steve Trevor to bring back Etta's lover. _She_ \- Diana Prince - was the spy now and out here she was looking for another spy who had vanished weeks ago, perhaps fallen prey to a mystical Cheetah creature that had been summoned.

Barbara Ann had worked across the world, accepted grudgingly, sometimes contested, by her male colleagues. But the rumors of eccentricity and novelty, the rumors of a vast fortune had opened her doors that remained closed to so many others of their sisters. Americans, Russians, Germans, French - everyone had been more than open to having her and so Barbara Ann had been privy to all kinds of information that made it back to British Intelligence.

"My father would turn in his grave if he knew what I was getting up to," she had told Diana with an angry smile. "If I'd been a son, well _then_ this would have been a different story. He would have made someone write _my_ history then. But I was just a girl."

Even with the war, many expeditions had sought the expertise of Barbara Ann Minerva. "Especially the men who think they can take credit for a woman's work. _Them_ I can always count on. They open me all the doors I need opened. And then I just need to make sure they stumble over their own egos."

Barbara Ann had been one of the best in all her fields of expertise.

Then - nearly six months ago - Barbara Ann had come here.

She had never returned to England and there had never been a message. Not to her designated contact, not to Etta who was sick with worry.

“We're not all like you, Diana. We're not getting younger. And I really wanted to grow old with my girl.” Etta had smiled so sadly. “She was so strange when she left. Like she knew she'd never come back to me. She said good-bye like it was final.”

Once Etta had explained to her, that she was an English woman. She kept her tears private. And yet that evening her old friend had sat with her and silently cried, letting Diana hold her hand as she worried about Barbara Ann.

This was her mission now: Bring back Barbara Ann.

She owed it to Etta, who had held Diana's hand when she'd come back from war without Steve, who had helped her navigate the world – and who even now had shared her secret with no-one.

Advancing became more difficult, when she found herself at the foot of a steep slope. She made her way up, careful not to slip on the wet leaves.

Suddenly the sounds around Diana stopped.

Eerie silence fell, like all animals had abandoned this part of the thick forest.

She halted her steps to listen.

There really was nothing.

No birds. No slithering. No trippling.

Life that had legs had fled the perimeter.

It might be a bad omen, but Diana knew holly groves often were like this: Set apart from the rest of the woods by the mystical power bestowed upon them. And from what little she had been able to find out, Barbara Ann had put together a party to look for a temple, a place of worship. Someone had paid her to find the lost city of the perished tribe of the Urzkartagans and the only hint of it was said to be the ruined place where thousands of years ago innocents had been sacrificed to the tribes deity. A mystical Cheeta goddess.

All Diana had found in her own stores of relics that was connected to the place was a small stone carved statue of a Cheetah headed human that looked like it might have Egyptian influences. That must have been the mystery that lured her friend here. A lost city, a lost high-culture forgotten by time and history.

And if the stories of the villagers were to be believed, Barbara Ann's party had fallen prey to the Cheeta goddess that was said to still prowl the jungle around her hidden temple, who was said to eat little children and kill all hunters who ventured out too far.

She hadn't believed it.

But something about this place was different.

Did the old gods still reign here though? And what would they think of the daughter of Zeus and Hyppolita stepping into their sanctum?

She hesitated only a moment. The gods of her people were dead and ony patrons and spirits still greeted you from all living things. If any of what she had learned in the past few decades was true, then her blood was the last flesh made magic that was left of the gods and goddesses of Olympus. But did that mean, all gods were gone?

Other magic, other gods and mystic creatures, might not be as dead as the gods that had granted her life.

No longer choosing her path carefully, she walked forward.

The solution to this riddle was close. She could feel it.

As she stepped over a thick branch, she had the feeling that magic was crackling in the air.

It made her halt again to look around and listen.

Steps.

She crouched down so fast that whoever it was stepping through the trees could not have seen her.

Alert, not forgetting any of her aunt Antiope's valuable lessons and those taught now by experience, she watched two men step into her field of vision. From where she was sitting, she could practically smell them. The uniforms gave them away: German soldiers in an African jungle, carrying rifles.

Without lifting herself out of her crouch she inched away towards a large tree. She did not take her eyes away from her adversaries.

_Barbara Ann? What did you get involved in?_

"You don't need to hide, my dear," a pleasant voice said and for a moment dizziness overcame her, dulled her senses. She couldn't tell from where the voice had been spoken and suddenly, like a veil had been taken from her eyes suddenly she was looking up at a woman in garb not dissimilar from her own accompanied by three soldiers at her side who had their rifles trained on Diana.

 _How?_ she thought. _How in this silence could I not have heard?_

The woman looked at her curiously. "And who might you be? All alone in the woods? Did you lose your protectors? Or are you the one we should fear."

The men only stared at Diana, faces grim and eyes cold. None of them would have hesitated to kill her if they thought she posed a real threat.

And yet, none of them even moved a muscle before the lady ordered Diana to get up.

Following the harsh request, Diana slowly got to her feet. She wasn't wearing her bracelets, but she knew she could take any of them in direct combat. The heavy rifles would be a disadvantage that she could use and they would not expect the young woman with the pulled back hair and the heavy glasses to possess superhuman strength and speed.

It hadn't taken her long to find out that deceiving her enemies was easy when they didn't look beyond the expectations infused in them from birth: that women were weak and would use "womanly wiles" and no brute force.

Diana was too skilled in the arts of fighting to think of herself as someone who used brute force when unnecessary, but her strength had grown into something far beyond even that of any Amazon before her.

She met her captor's gaze head on, correctly interpreting the woman to be the one in charge.

The woman smiled, surprised, showing respect at Diana's defiance. And as she studied Diana, Diana used the moment to study her in turn. She was a real beauty; one of the rare beauties that bards and poets praised centuries after their youth had perished. Her hair was dark and so were her warm brown eyes.

Diana blinked.

Just for a moment there was a shimmer of red in the brown and a shimmer of purple in the dark black hair.

She shook her head, feeling the dizziness creep up on her again. She must be mistaken...

"Curious," the woman said. Then she looked over at the soldiers and said in perfect German: "Look for her companions. She won't have come alone."

Playing along, Diana made the kind of gesture people were prone to make in this situation - she let her eyes fix on a point in the woods nervously and then quickly looked in the opposite direction. The motion was noticed and two of the men walked towards the point immediately.

"You must be one of the friends of dear Barbara Ann?" the woman said.

"Where is she?"

"Oh? She is where she wants to be. She found her lost city of Urzkartaga, dear. Come along. You've come at the right time to meet her, Ms...?"

"Prince," she said, "Diana Prince."

She had been using the false name that Steve had given her since that day and she had taken to wearing it with pride. Princess Diana of Themiscyra had no place in this world that had forgotten so much of its own history and rules. Diana Prince belong here.

"A pleasure, young lady, I am sure.

"And who are you, Ms..."

"Oh, Mrs actually. Donna Milton," she said in an accent that Diana could place in the American Midwest.

"Why would an American be working for the Germans?"

Donna threw her head back and laughed so heartily it would have been infectious if it hadn't been for the unpleasant circumstance. "Working for? I think not," she scoffed. "We have a mutually beneficial agreement. That is all."

Again she smiled so pleasantly that Diana would have thought them friends or ladies meeting for a tea party. It would be wrong to underestimate someone who could show this level of open amusement and pleasantry, when marching a prisoner through a jungle.

Diana walked now, deliberately stumbling and overly careful to slow down their movements. She wanted to take all the time she could to take in her surroundings and form a new plan.

"Why did you prey on Doctor Minerva and her party?"

"You give us too much credit," Mrs. Milton said lightly. "We did not prey on anyone. Tell me Ms. Prince, your accent is quite peculiar. Who do you spy for? Russia?"

"I am here as a botanist," she said, "I lost my companions..." Despite her personal distaste for lies she had become quite good at misdirecting people when she had to.

"Oh, but of course, dear," the woman said and her unusually colored eyes flashed. “We're all here as botanists and archaeologist. Comes with the territory. We're all so desperate to find out how we've come to be here, right?”

Her tone had changed and Diana picked up on it immediately. She hadn't worked as a spy without learning a thing or two about honesty and deception.

Mrs Milton was playing.

“You,” she told Diana, “will come to find I'm not that easily deceived. Where are your friends? You did not come here alone.”

“What if I did?”

Donna Milton snorted. “You'd be a little more interesting if that were the case. Who are you working for?”

Her gaze bored into Diana's.

“Tell me,” she urged. “You will tel me.”

Again, and just for a disorientatingly brief instant she thought again that there was a flash of red in the brown eyes. Her lasso was tightly wrapped and with other tools hang from her belt. Now she was itching to use it. Something here was amiss and she didn't know what. The truth needed to be revealed.

The men standing around her seemed unemotional and blank, waiting for a sign of their smiling leader...

“Are they under your spell?” Diana asked, thinking of the magic of old and dismissing it even while she asked.

Donna Milton stopped though and studied Diana.

It was a tell. Or maybe it was the uncaring openness of someone who was aware of their own power.

“Of course, they are,” Mrs Milton admitted easily. Now her eyes were shining with interest. “But who are you? Another strong-willed woman looking for immortality?”

“Immortality?” The word came like a shock. Of course, she hadn't come here for that, because she _had_ it. Her perpetual unchanged youth as much a problem to keeping herself hidden as her other Amazon traits.

“Yes, dear, Although I have to disappoint you. A spry woman beat you to it. The Cheetah is prowling these woods again.” She grinned and showed her teeth, like a beast. “You'll make a good prey for her next hunt.”

Diana's throat went dry. “The Cheetah... The bodies and vanished men and boys from the village...” She remembered the one mutilated body she'd been shown while village elders had talked about their legends and thinking: “This was a wild animal. The rest are stories.”

Mrs Milton was grinning like a predator showing its teeth and her beauty was so sharp, like the bleeding edge of a knife.

“You are...”

“Not me. I'm much more,” she said. “I made my own destiny a long time ago and I found someone who wanted power like mine, eternal youth _like mine_. People. So easy to manipulate. I needed a vessel for a good and I got one.”

Diana froze. Her heartbeat quickened. “What happened to Barbara Ann Minerva? Where is my friend?”

Donna Milton laughed and it was a terrible sound. “Did you hear this Barbara Ann?” she shouted. “A friend came to look for you. Aren't you hungry?”

Behind her the underbrush rustled and Diana turned. A humanoid shape emerged, fur and spots like Cheetah's... A tail. The face was contorted by rage or hunger, sharp teeth bared.

Barbara Ann Minerva.

But changed.

“Barbara Ann, what did you do?” Diana's heartbeat was still fast, adrenaline as coursing through her and she was read go fight. Antiope had taught her and she honored her aunt by holding on to all she had taught her.

“Little Diana,” the familiar and yet changed voice _growled_. “Etta's lovely friend.”

“Your friend,” Diana said. “Let me help you now.”

“I hunger,” the Cheetah spoke. “I hunger. Let me feed.”

And it was clear that Diana was to be the food.

Sadness came over her so strong that she let her arms sink. “Oh, Barbara Ann. What did you do?”

“I wanted to be strong and young again. I wanted to have magic and own the secrets of a good. Now I do.”

“But at a price,” Mrs Milton supplied and smiled at Diana.

Then Barbara Ann pounced, her claws out and her teeth barred and Diana caught her wrist before the sharp, dangerous claws reached her face.

It took all her strength to hold Barbara Ann.

“You killed, Barbara Ann. You killed innocent people, for what? Let me help you.”

The soldiers had stepped back to give them a perimeter. But Barbara Ann and Mrs Milton seemed to be frozen in shock.

“What are you?” Mrs Milton said.

“Strong,” the Cheetah mused. “How can you hold me Diana? What power did you steal?”

“None,” she said and pushed her back, watched her fall onto the jungle floor and crouch back into a pounce with inhuman speed. She wished for her shield and for her sword, but knew she would be good enough to fight with her own bare hands.

The Cheetah was on her then, trying to slash out her throat, toppling both of them over, but Diana was stronger. She could hold her, could throw her off easily and get back to her feet.

“You killed Ares,” the woman behind her whispered. “You are _her_. Amazon.”

Surprised Barbara Ann froze and growled. “You had power all this time? You kept this from me? You and Etta?”

Diana had her lasso in hand. She wanted the truth now too.

She needed the truth.

She needed a way to safe her friend.

Mrs Milton laughed. Her laughter ringing through the forest.

“All of us,” the Cheetah growled, “liars. Die now, Diana.”

Diana didn't know why she deserved so much resentment, so much hate.

“Youth,” Mrs Milton's voice whispered in her mind. “Eternal youth. Barbara Ann was getting older and her lover had spent a decade fawning over her beautiful friend. It was so easy to turn her, dear. And look at you. Amazon. Liar. Spy.”

The words distracted her, long enough for Barbara Ann to get close again. Claws pierced the skin of her shoulder.

 _Concentrate!_ Antiope's voice reminded her from the depth of memory.

“Who are you?” she called out to Mrs Milton. “What are you?”

The Cheetah buried her teeth in Diana's arm making her cry out. But her lasso had wound around the Cheetah's legs and she could pull her off her feet now with one strong swoop, used the momentum to wrench the lasso free again and surprise Mrs Milton with it. It wrapped around her arms and midsection, immobilizing.

Her blouse was covered in blood and ripped and Cheetah seemed unfazed and unbeaten.

“Circe,” Donna Milton said and her hair was a stunning violet and her eyes a fearsome red. And in the long lost tongue of Colchis she said: “Ares sends his regards. Soon he'll rise.”

Shock went through her.

Ares.

Again.

She had killed him and now this woman was bringing him back? For what?

Claws struck her shoulders and teeth sunk into her throat. She cried out in pain.

A battle for life and death had only begun.

“I'm sorry, Barbara Ann. We failed you. I failed you. You failed us too. I'll get you back,” she whispered in a rush, before punching her fist back and into the Cheetah's face.

* * *

“You are good at this,” Etta told her newest recruit. “You have the makings of a good code breaker.”

“Thank you, Ms Candy.”

“Etta, call me Etta, please.” She was still working her way through the stack of paper. “Your brother is serving?”

“Yes,” she said. “He's in France now.”

Etta nodded. Margaret Elizabeth Carter came from a good family background. The Carter's served as officers in the Queen's military. The brother was an officer. And like many young women who wanted to do their part in this war, Ms Carter was looking for a way to help.

“Do you now why you had to pass a written test?” Etta asked after she went over the results one last time.

“I don't know exactly,” Margaret Carter said and smiled, “but I have my suspicions.”

Etta chuckled. “Pray tell me.”

“Solving riddles against a clock,” the young woman said. “You need something deciphered.”

Good, Etta thought. She does think for herself. “Yes,” she agreed. “Something and everything and more than that.”

“That sounds cryptic.” Ms Carter smiled. She did not look overly nervous. Only the way she tried to settle her hands in her lap seemed to give away some strain.

Etta took a sheet of paper from her desk drawer. “Margret Carter,” she said.

“Peggy,” the young woman corrected. “Peggy, please.”

“Peggy,” Etta repeated and laughed. She was fond of the ones who spoke up. Men were still convinced hey were winning this war, but Etta knew they'd be lost without all the women in the European resistance cells, without the women who were willing to serve as spies the continent over, who were stepping up to work as codebreakers and who were willing to do their husband's jobs while the men were away, the world would be lost. She pushed the sheet of paper across the table. “Read this, Peggy. Read it carefully. Take a day or two and think about it. Then come back to me.”

Peggy was a beautiful young woman with intelligent brown eyes and her lips were a bright, shiny red. None of this seemed to surprise her. “I already know what my answer is going to be.”

“Good,” Etta said. “That makes it easier. Take the time anyway and think about it. This is not a decision anyone should make lightly. Read this carefully now. The sheet of paper can't leave this office. You can't talk this through with anyone, Peggy. This is what your life is going to be if you decide on this.”

Pulling the paper closer and licking her lips, Peggy nodded and started reading in silence.

When she finished she neatly stacked the papers and pushed them back towards Etta. Her curls fell down over her shoulder as she sat back in her chair. “What is the earliest you'll accept me back here.”

“The day after tomorrow,” Etta said. “Think it through.”

Peggy nodded, pushed back her chair and nodded. “Good-bye then.”

Etta watched her go, a young woman who was just about to enter a new path. She remembered what it was like to stumble into the business. After all she had been the one to take care of papers and communication for a an agent in the field.

Right now, Etta Candy wished she was still young enough to run around the globe herself.

She was worried.

Diana had gone after Barbara Ann and since then Etta hadn't heard _anything_. She trusted Diana. She knew Diana would get new back to her if she could. After all Diana was Diana.

That counted for a lot.

It would take a big threat to be a threat to an Amazon, a demi-goddess, like Diana.

That didn't worry Etta.

Barbara Ann's fate was keeping her awake though.

She left her little office in the SEO section and took the Tube instead of calling for a car. She enjoyed the slow walk home from the station. Her apartment wasn't too far and walking gave her something to do, helped her clear her mind of the gnawing worry.

As Barbara Ann had inherited her father's estate she had only shared this apartment with Etta when she was in London for an extended stay. Recently those had been few.

The first thing she noticed when she entered the flat was that the window across the small sitting room was wide open. The curtains were waving in the soft autumn wind. She froze. Then hope welled up. _Barbara Ann_ , she thought.

She still grabbed her small gun from her black leather handbag.

“Who is there?”

“It's me, Etta. It is me.”

 _Diana_.

And then her friend stepped from the small bathroom. She was still wearing her olive-beige clothing, made for the jungles and not Etta's London flat, but they looked dirty and tattered. There was blood all over her, vicious scratches and flesh wounds.

“What happened?”

She closed the door. Went to close the window down to shut out the world.

[ Art by woad](https://tinctoriawoad.tumblr.com/post/167663372195/badnewsforetta)

Diana stood there by the bathroom door, looking grim.

“Diana? Where is...”

“Etta,” Diana said and her face _bled_ sadness, “I'm so sorry. I came too late... She...”

She broke down, before Diana had even finished and Diana was by her side instantly, holding her shoulders, hugging her in her grief.

“Barbara Ann,” Diana explained, “she isn't dead. It's... She's... changed.”

And in her perfect cadence Diana started her story, explained all she had found out, all trails she followed and Etta only realized that the lasso was around Diana's wrist when Diana held up her arm to show here, while she was talking about the Cheetah, about Circe and about the fight.

“I flew here. I flew all the way here, to bring you the news.”

A tear rolled down Etta's cheek, but she wiped it away, slowly finding her composure. “She told me she was afraid of getting older,” Etta whispered, sad and wrestling with the need for understanding. “She told me she did not want to ever give up on the adventure.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Did she really collaborate? Germans?”

“I don't know the extend of it.”

Etta nodded. “We need to find out then.”

“Yes, we do.”

“Let me see to your wounds first.”

She helped Diana get out of her ruined clothes, helped her dress up the worst wound, thought both of them knew they would heal impossibly fast.

“You came back to me so fast. You must be exhausted.”

“I am. I haven't met a foe like the Cheetah since...”

“This is the first time you flew in six years.”

“Yes, it was a thrill.” Her face lit up with a smile. “I admit it.”

Etta patted her arm. “Rest now. Rest.”

They both needed it. Especially if they wanted to find a way to help Barbara Ann, especially if Diana had to face Circe again and stop the return of her Greek god half-brother.

“These are complicated times,” she mumbled as they settled on the small sofa. Etta made Diana rest her head in her lap, outwardly calm now, although she was struggling with inner turmoil

“Yes, complicated. And yet paths are clear. If this war is the path humanity chose without Ares, then do we really want to see what happens when he comes back.”

She shook her head slowly and looked down at Diana. Right now, she had to admit the only thing she cared about was getting Barbara Ann back. But was that even desirable? Did you want to save the traitor.

As if she'd read her thoughts, Diana reached up to touch her cheek and said: “We'll get her back. She's our friend. We'll get her back and forgive her. It won't be that easy for her to forgive herself.”

Diana had a way of seeing the world that way. Etta hoped she could find it in herself to see it like that one day too.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

They stopped talking and sat together in silence, both of them following their own thoughts. Diana fells asleep first.

Etta must have drifted off too.

Because when she opened her eyes next, Diana was gone.

A sound drew her gaze across the room. Diana stepped out of the guest bed room, wearing her colorful leather armor and holding her shield in one hand, the sword in the other. Her hair was open, the glasses gone.

She looked fierce. Ready for a fight.

And completely out of place in the dingy sitting room.

This wasn't Diana Prince. It was Diana of Themiscyra.

Etta smiled. “Going to war?”

“It is time. Espionage was Steve's way and yours and for years now it gave me the opportunity to listen and learn. But I can't ignore this.”

“You know both sides will give you a hard time if they learn of your existence, Diana.” That fear was why they had kept the secret in the first place.

“I'll be careful.”

Diana stepped over, put down sword and shield, on Etta's shaky little living room table. Then she took Etta's face in both hands and smiled and pressed a kiss to her brow.

“Thank you for everything, sister. I'll do you proud in battle. I'll bring her back if I can.”

Etta reached up and clasped her right hand over Diana's hand that was resting on her cheek. She could still see the healing scars of predator claws and teeth all along Diana's neck and arms. “Be careful. Always let me know what you need. I'll do my best to keep your movements secret.”

It was their pact.

Their own little pact in a world that was pulled apart between factions.

“And come back home.”

Diana nodded, smiled. Unhurriedly she picked up her weapons and walked to the window.

She nodded at Etta one last time and Etta nodded back. This was their bond of trust.

The Diana opened the window and swung herself out as if she'd never done anything else, as if her legs had never belonged on the floor in the first place – and was gone.

* * *

Diana went back to war; not the war of spies and secrets she’d been fighting since she’d killed Ares and rid the world of the evil that had stoked the flames of the last great war. She knew now that she’d been young and blind and grieving and had taken up Steve's profession because it was how he had chosen to change the world. But also, because she had wanted to fight her fight without endangering more friends. She’d grieved for Steve Trevor, she had blamed herself for leading him - the breakable man that he’d been, that _they all were_ \- to that last battlefield where he had been forced to make his fateful sacrifice. In her mission she had been driven, convinced to know what was right. But she had not then known what her example would lead him too.

She was an Amazon.

And yet she was also a demi-goddess; perhaps now the last strand of power that had been left behind by the pantheon of an old world that the present had long forgotten, relegated to the spheres of myths and fairy-tales. She was a half-goddess – unbreakable and immortal if not completely un-killable. 

Diana was the only proof in this world of their reality.

And thus, she felt, she owed it to them, the gods, the patrons, her own legacy and mission and also to the men and women who had lost their lives for peace – and, of course, to Steve Trevor, who had loved her briefly and intensely before sacrificing himself for something that was greater than him.

She owed it to his example to not let war rampage again as it was rampaging now. She owed it to his memory and herself to not let her brother be resurrected. In his jealousy of Zeus' creation Ares would try to destroy humanity once and for all, if he was ever brought back to life.

But Ares was dead and war was raging anyway.

It was her task to protect where she could and bring peace. It was the sacred oath of every Amazon.

She would be an Amazon again.

For years she'd played by the rules of this world. This time she wouldn’t bother playing by the rules of men, but use her power to make her own rules. Diana, Princess of the Amazons, hadn’t known how men played at war. But Diana Prince had learned enough about how the world worked to know how to stay out of sight, how not to be noticed, how to be your own player on the board. 

And that was what she was going to do.

Because the Godkiller, magnificent and well forged, had not withstood the powers of Ares, she needed a new sword. 

Three years ago she had recovered the sword stolen from the grave of an Amazon warrior on a small island close to the coast of Turkey. Now she picked up the sword of Cete and spoke a silent prayer of thanks to her long departed sister. Piece by piece she put on her armor that she had kept hidden in her office store room among artifacts and relics of ancients history. 

When she finally looked at herself in the mirror, she felt a serene sense of calm settle over her.

This was who she was.

Diana.

She'd always been meant to follow her own heritage and she had always found a way to do protect those who were in need of protection.

Now Ares had allies and everyone needed to be protected from their wrath. It was time for her to act.

She didn’t bother checking in at base. Etta would cover for her. And flying was so much easier than waiting for a plane. She was in France by morning, hiding the bright colors of her armor under a long black cloak, just like she had the first time she set foot in the trenches. She picked the place not because she could see troop movements, but because she could see soldiers drag a family from their home. She landed outside the village and walked in at a brisk pace without showing her face under the cloak.

“Stop,” she shouted in German, when she was close enough, recognizing the green-gray of the German uniforms.

A little girl on the transport was wailing and the men and women were begging to be left to her home and lives. They were ordinary people who wanted nothing more than to live in peace.

Anger welled up inside of her at the sounds of their distress, but she held it down. Antiope had taught her better. Anger was to drive your strength, not to cloud your judgment. 

“Who the hell are you?” a gruff soldier readily pulled up his rifle. “One of ‘em are ya? Daughter?”

There was no need to reply. She loosened the fastenings of her cloak and let if fall in a heap at her feet so she stood in front of all of them as she was: An Amazon, ready to fight and not afraid of a bunch of men who felt strong and superior, because they could terrorize helpless people.

“You will let them go,” she commanded. The lasso at her hip was singing to her already and she reached for it.

The man laughed. Insults followed, about her daring, about her dress, about her being a woman who thought she could stand up to three strong men.

Not two minutes later, none of them were laughing, as she dusted off her cloak, before picking it back on. 

“You are free now,” she told the silently staring family. 

“We have nowhere to go,” the mother said, the first who dared to address her in Yiddish. 

Diana switched to her language as easily as she put on the cloak. “Don’t worry. I will find a place for you and your family. Somewhere where you'll be safe, where you can get away.”

She flew the German transport across the front line and sat it down gently, aware that everyone was watching her like she was a ghost, a friendly apparition, but not entirely real.

Trying to calm them a bit, she smiled. 

This was only the beginning.

She was going to be a ghost, a myth, a legend, giving hope to those in need and putting fear into the heart's of her enemies.

And she would hit were nobody saw her coming, until the Cult of Ares came for her.

* * *

Two days later British troops were under fire and they were losing. Young men were dying on both sides - and for what?

This would not be a decisive battle. It was senseless carnage. 

She fell from the sky like one of their aerial bombs, shield in hand, coming down in front of a young man who had fallen. He’d been hit in the shoulder and Diana, with one flick of the wrist pushed a grenade to to side that would have taken him apart. She hated this kind of battle, these weapons that no longer left anything for the families to bury. It was shameful. It was without honor. It was the kind of destruction Ares would have loved.

The young man looked up at her in away.

She knew, to him and many others now, she was an impossibility, a fancy story the soldiers were telling each other when they were trying to keep the fear away. 

“You… You are _her_ ,” the man whispered in English, his breath coming back to him only slowly.

They were still under fire and Diana protected both of them with her shield. She took the fire without feeling any strain at the push-back. Then she smiled at the fallen man.

His friends were coming to pull him back to safety and she stood, put away her shield and skimmed the bullets, deflected them with her bracelets as easily as if she was squatting away raindrops. After a moment the fire stopped. 

Soldiers on both sides stared at her, scared, in awe or simply grateful.

So far, she had stayed away from the real fighting, saving the innocents that died far away from any battle. Now, the soldiers would hear her story over and over again, because she'd shown herself right in the fray. It was a dangerous game she was playing here, but she needed the witch from the jungle to come for her. Rumors of her whereabouts needed to circulate to lure her out.

“It’s a woman,” a voice shouted from behind of her, from over where the British soldiers were lying in the dirt.

The Germans were too stupefied to run. 

Diana took that as an invitation. With one leap she reached them and ripped apart a rotary machine gun with her bare hand for all to see.

On the German side the first men - some of them boys - abandoned their posts and ran.

Shouting picked up as the British started pushing forwards.

Diana, standing propped up on a haphazard barricade, the broken gun at her feet, looked back to her injured soldier. He was being held up between two men and all were staring at her open mouthed, her memory edged on her memories.

“Thank you,” he mouthed and she smiled at him, counting every single life saved as its own reward. Then she shot into the air, leaving them behind like she’d never actually been there.

The victory filled her with joy.

* * *

She read her brother’s letter three times. Three.

Her intelligence training was keeping her busy, but what Michael wrote to her seemed to be so impossible that she couldn’t even imagine it. Had war and suffering driven him mad?

Had he been delirious with pain and fever when he’d been brought to the hospital?

But no, his writing was legible and everything he wrote how he always would: giving her the facts straight, but detailed on description of events.

> I would have died then and there, Peggy. My life was flashing in front of my eyes – and there she was, like an angel who had fallen from heaven with a flaming sword to bring down the wrath of god on the Nazis. The sword wasn't flaming, or course. But there was a sword and I still can't quite believe it. I know you won't believe it even less, because who can believe it if they weren't there to see it? 
> 
> She fell, Peggy. She came from the sky in a plain with no trees and no way for her to let herself fall from a branch. I wonder if she had a plane up above us to bring her there and to pick her back up just as suddenly, but what technology would be needed to keep it hidden from the collective gaze of hundreds of solders? And how did she get it to recover her? Do you think there is technology to stage an illusion like that? Is that the Americans joining our war effort finally?”
> 
> We had heard some rumours about the Wonder Woman from survivors, from refugees, from the villages.
> 
> But would you have thought it was anything more than the confused rambling of people who had escaped death?
> 
> Do you believe _me_?
> 
> I don't know. 
> 
> But let me tell you what I saw. 
> 
> A woman of extraordinary beauty appeared right in front of me when I had fallen, a bullet lodged in my thigh and another in my shoulder. I was lucky to be alive still, that no bullet had killed me yet, and I was looking my own death in the eyes. Guns were trained on me and I had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. She protected me with a shield and made sure I was being pulled away to safety.
> 
> Then she charged in. 
> 
> She had long black hair and she was dressed like a warrior. I'd say it looked like a Roman armor – red and blue with silver and white gold metal fixings. Her shield matched. It was big and round like ones you'd find in history books.
> 
> She took a machine gun apart with her bare hands. I saw it. Everybody saw it and will attest to it. But the first soldiers are reluctant to tell the story now, because it's to unreal, to unbelievable.
> 
> Do you think I'm crazy, delusional? I'm not. I know what I saw and I know I owe her my life. But who is she and where did she come from?
> 
> Peggy, do you remember uncle Arthur? We all thought war had shocked him into telling those weird stories from the trenches... Remember the story about the woman who walked across no man's land without taking a bullet? I think he saw _her_.

She stopped reading. 

She remembered the story, of course. Nobody had ever believed it, but it had made a fun family story to recite at parties. Uncle Arthur had told it with so much fervor though, like he really believed it had happened. But how could it be real? How could a woman from years ago appear the same on a battle field now in another war.

Appear and be gone in the blink of an eye.

It was impossible. It sounded like a ghost story.

> I know mother is upset with you. I know you are still thinking about going through with the wedding, because you think it's what you should be doing. Don't think about it, Peggy. I know you. I put your name on the list for intelligence services, because I know you better than anyone else does. You don't want a quiet life. You always wanted adventure.
> 
> Go and be brilliant.
> 
> I love you.

That last line always brought a smile to her face.

Because it was part of the agreement, she hadn't talked to anyone, about what she was doing. Nobody would know more than that she had taken a new position as secretary or typist for a general or bureaucrat. She remembered the amused lilt in Etta Candy's voice when she'd said: “Oh, I was a secretary once. It's how I got started. Led an operation from a minister's ante-room. I'm sure, your family will like the story better than the truth, Agent Carter. They'll accept it without question.”

At least her mother would, Peggy knew. She was still upset with Peggy for having broken the engagement to a good man. And he had been a good man in his own way, but if Peggy was honest with herself, Michael had been right from the start: he wasn't the right man for her. There was so much more in life she wanted to do, that she'd never get to do if she became a proper little housewife.

Now she was Agent Carter and she liked the ring it had to it.

Peggy had taken the position as one of Agent Candy's girls. She had been good with decryption, but what she was doing now gave her a thrill. For the last days she'd been receiving pilot training and she guessed her mother would be horrified to know that she knew now how to shoot a gun and that she was going through sabotage training and that someone was teaching her hand to hand combat.

Michael knew her so well. It was a shame that she couldn't tell him about it. He was the only one who would understand if he would ever be allowed to know about it.

“Wonder Woman,” she whispered and touched the words in the letter. She wanted to believe it, but it seemed like an impossible dream, a sliver of hope that had kept Michael afloat. It was a long time since she'd believe in fairy tales. But maybe it was the kind of name she wanted to aspire to. 

She wanted to make a difference where she could, even if the whole world told her a woman wasn't up for it.

Folding the letter carefully, she put it in the breast pocket of her uniform jacket, a piece of Michael to carry with her through what was to come. Her orders had come in. The first mission started here and now.

She dressed carefully in her uniform and walked over to Agent Candy's office.

“Ah, right on time, right on time. Come in, Carter,” Etta Candy said to her. She was in high spirits and Peggy realized that while she hadn't ever seen the older woman with anything but a smile, this was different. Her body language had changed. She was happy. Something had happened. Had she received some good news?

Peggy smiled at her and refrained from asking. In times of war every bit of hope made for good news and it was none of her business.

She stepped fully into the room and noticed a tall woman standing by the window, watching her with open, friendly interest.

Peggy inclined her head and the other woman nodded back.

“Peggy,” Etta said less formal. “This is Agent Diana Prince.”

“Agent Prince,” Peggy said and nodded, wondering if she was going to be assigned a partner. 

The woman smiled and when she did her eyes were glowing like liquid gems that had caught a candle's light. Peggy couldn't look away. Despite the gray coat and glasses she had never seen a more beautiful woman. Heat rose in her cheeks at the inappropriate thought.

 _Eyes on the mission, Peggy,_ she thought. _Eyes on the mission._

But a small, comfortable tingling worked its way through her stomach, when the woman stepped closer.

 _This_ wasn't new. Peggy had always fancied an attractive girl or woman, but it was part of the life she'd for a while been ready to leave behind. She could only imagine what her mother would have to say if she ever found out that Peggy had these inclinations.

And what the other woman say.

As if she'd heard Peggy's thoughts, Agent Prince smiled a little brighter.

“Diana,” Etta said and it sounded like both an admonishment and encouragement. “Why don't you... Oh dear, why don't you tell Miss Carter yourself?”

The woman nodded at Etta and it was really just lovely how expressive her angled face was. “Agent Carter,” she started and her voice was like honey, and her diction wasn't English. She spoke with a melodious foreign accent that made Peggy think of sun-kissed coasts and undulating landscapes.

Her black hair was bound in a knot at the back of her head.

None of it could hide that there was something exotic about her, something that made her stand out.

“I have some information for your mission. I hear it's the first time you'll venture into enemy territory.”

Realizing that she was being studied with interest too, she licked her lips and tried to focus back on the matter at hand. “I actually traveled in Germany before the war. Not much, but we went for hiking and... I think I'm supposed to go to the Allgäu area?”

Agent Prince nodded and she was still smiling, although, she seemed serene, but also like she was gauging Peggy. “What makes a young woman like you want to do a dangerous job like this?” she asked and Etta Candy straightened, listening up. 

Why was she being tested by a fellow agent? “I felt in times like these it's everyone's duty to do what they can,” she said calmly and hoped she was giving the right answers. “You can either do soothing or do nothing and nobody in my family was ever good at the later.” At least it had been true for the men who'd served over the years. And there notably had been the one great aunt who'd gone on an exploration trip to the middle east causing one scandal after another in proper English society after - and her mother's sister who had gotten it into her head to race cars.

Oh, well. She was a Carter.

“Ah,” Diana said calmly, but her eyes were shining with less of the joyful light. Was that sadness? Peggy wanted to wipe it away to see the clear expression again. “Someone once said something very similar to me, Agent Carter. He wasn't as young as you are now. He knew that he had tried nothing and wanted to do what he could then. But it was hard and for some time he lost his way. At least I think that's what happened, before we met.”

“Lost...?”

“He was a proper hero.”

“Diana,” Etta Candy said softly and Agent Prince looked at her and nodded.

“I think she should know what path she chooses.”

“She knows,” Agent Candy said softly.

“Good.” Apparently Agent Prince was ready to accept that.

“Far be it from me to stop a woman to join the ranks, Miss Carter.” Finally she smiled again with more of the gleam from before. “Let me walk you through the information I have for you.”

“And then,” Etta Candy threw in, “how about you test her hand to hand combat skill. She will need those.”

“Hand to hand combat?” Peggy asked. She had gone through her basic training already. There would be more training?

“Believe me. Diana knows a trick or two that might come in handy.”

Diana smiled serenely as she and Peggy leaned over a map that had already been spread on the desk.

“You know your objective?”

“We are trying to find out more about the Nazi Science Division that has been operating across Europe for some time. I'm going in to find out if they are operating in this area.” She pointed it out on the map to show she knew the details of her mission by heart. “Men and women have been carried off to different parts of Germany and Eastern Europe. Soldiers, civilians. We think they are used for experimentation.”

She let the words hover in the air. She was still horrified at the revelation how far Germany was ready to go.

“We need to know what kind of experiments,” Etta confirmed.

Diana pointed at places on the map. “This is where rumors say they're working on project _Gotterdämmerung_ ”

“Twilight of the Gods?” Peggy asked. She knew the Wagner opera, of course, but she didn't like the sound of this at all.

She listens to the spares information that Agent Prince related in sure, short sentences. She sounded like someone who had been there, who had surveyed the terrain and knew her way around.

“Why aren't you going?” Peggy finally asked.

Diana's dark eyes met hers over the table. “I have my own mission. I'm needed in Eastern Europe or a while.”

She sounded grave, like whatever was there was more horrifying than a Nazi science facility that experimented on people.

Peggy felt her throat go dry. Did she want to know what horrors waited east?

“We're not all like you Diana, but we're not all Steve Trevor either.”

“In a war like this,” Diana said, “you are.” She sounded resigned to the fact and Peggy wondered who Steve Trevor was. A brother? A husband? A friend? Someone who hadn't been as lucky as Michael.

Later Diana met her at the raining facility and Peggy, dressed for exercise, wondered at the woman walking in in her uniform, like she expected not to be needing the more flexible clothing. She was smiling again.

“Don't worry,” she said. “I won't be too hard on you. I just want to teach you some simple moves.”

Peggy grinned. She was better at this than most of the other recruits. She knew how to use her agility, and how to down men that were far greater than her.

She expected Diana's first blow with a cocky smile, but then she didn't even see her move, before she found herself on her back on the floor, all air knocked from her lungs. “Ouch,” she said and stared up at the happily smiling woman. 

“Concentrate,” Diana said in her lovely accent, honey dripping from her words. “Losing your focus is your greatest enemy.”

“Point taken.” 

Diana helped her back to her feet and Peggy realized she hadn't even put away her glasses. _Probably because she needs them_ , she thought.

“I'm ready,” she promised. 

Her instructor laughed. “Everyone thinks that.”

But from there, Diana took her time, showed Peggy how to grab her, how to block her, gently pushing her along, explaining some easy tricks that would help her disarming opponents and getting out of the hold of someone with superior strength. Her hands brushed across Peggy's hips once and she could feel fire rise in her, thinking distractedly about how these lithe hands would feel on her in a less serious situation. It earned her another painful landing. 

“You weren't concentrating.” 

“No,” Peggy admitted, “I wasn't.” 

A few moves later, fiercely keeping herself from being distracted, determined to prove herself, she managed to make Diana stumble backwards and landed on top of her, breathless and her cheeks heated from the exertion. “Oh,” she said, freezing right in place on top of the other woman, feeling their breasts pressed together in position that was far too intimate, and staring down, embarrassed.

“I think you've got it,” Diana said and held her gaze, seemingly comfortable. 

It took Peggy a moment to realize she was supposed to move and in that frozen instant, she noticed not only the beauty of Diana, but also that the other woman wasn't even breathing hard.

And she was smiling warmly at Peggy.

“You can get up now, Agent Carter.”

“Oh, yes, yes! Of course!”

She scrambled up and jumped a few feet away, before remembering her manners and helping the other woman to her feet. 

“Thank you!” Diana said courteously and let herself be pulled up, although it looked like she could have managed just fine on her own.

* * *

Three months later, Agent Carer had made a name for herself, when after four tense weeks without contact with HQ and reportedly MIA she returned to England, with defecting scientist of German-British descent, Abraham Erskine, who brought with him the secrets of the German secret science division code-named “Ares” and the details of project “Götterdämmerung”.

“Peggy, Peggy, Peggy,” Etta Canday said with a nervous smile, when she finally stood back in her office to give a full report. Now that Peggy had seen war, Candy's office looked small and strange, untouched by the war that Peggy had for the first time seen up close and that had taken over her life for the last weeks.

 _How do people return to this, after the violence?_ she thought and thought of Michael, thought of her discarded wedding gown – and inappropriately thought of the mysterious smile of Agent Prince. In her darkest moment, she had admitted to herself that she wanted nothing more than to see the other woman again. She'd take the risk of being called a pervert, if she would only know that the other agent had come back from her mission safely.

Peggy felt like she was a different woman now, who had seen how easily lives could be destroyed, how easily your own life could be ripped away from you. It gave her spunk. It gave her the unabashed certainty that life was too valuable to be missed out on. 

Carefully, she pulled a notebook from her chest pocket, right where she also kept Michael's letter about the warrior apparition who had saved him. “This is the notebook the doctor brought with him. He took it from his superior hours before he came to meet me.”

“Is it connected to the super soldier project? The god they were trying to cook up?”

Peggy nodded and then after some thought shook her head. “I decrypted part of it. Some is in an a foreign language. I can't read it. But what I could read, speaks of weapons of mass destruction, about the resurrection of war, about the destruction of the enemy, of humanity, of life.”

Etta looked down at it. “The resurrection of war.”

“Yes,” Peggy affirmed. “You'd think we have seen enough of that.”

“Oh, not like what they have in mind,” Etta told her cryptically. 

“There is something else. Survivors spoke of monster roaming the streets at night. A predator with claws and a lust for blood... It sounded like fairy tales, but I saw the bodies. Not a pretty sight.”

Her superior officer went pale.

“Thank you,” she said. “That will be all, Agent Carter.”

She handed her a folder with her new orders.

Together with Erskine she was going to New York, where the doctor would resume his work on the serum under the supervision of American General Phillips. The Americans were ready to invest money and man power to make a super human happen.

Even Peggy knew that the front was bustling with stories of a mysterious warrior, an Amazon warrior sprung from legend and myth, who saved soldiers and children and civilians and vanished again. It seemed, stories were no longer enough to win this war. They needed to get the advantage before the Nazis did.

The allied forces wanted their own breed of superior warrior.

And Abraham Erskine had reluctantly agreed to be part of the project, as long as he would get a hand in the selection process. 

Even on their flight over the channel to England, when for the first time he'd been out of reach of the Ares division, he had forlornly said to her: “We need to win this war or we are doomed, Miss Carter. But I wonder at what cost we'll achieve it.”

* * *

Diana walked up beside Etta and watched Peggy Carter talking to the American general. “Steve's people,” she said.

Etta looked at her. “Chief took you to the US, Diana. You know the world now. Don't pretend you don't know America.”

“Yes, land of the free and poor masses.” She smiled and cocked her head to the side, only slightly mocking. “Also morality,” she rolled her eyes. “Worse than you English in their prudishness.”

She liked the way Etta laughed at that. “Well, dear, there is a reason why you ended up in Paris.”

“I would have stayed in Berlin if the climate hadn't change so rapidly. So much dancing. It was vivacious and beautiful. I don't know how the mood changed so easily. It should have gone on forever, that golden age.”

“Yes,” Etta agreed easily. “We all miss it.”

Erskine looked tired and gray even from afar and Etta remarked: “He thinks he's going to be killed before they reach New York.”

“His fear are justified.”

“It is really that bad?”

“Circe,” Diana said. “She's so much more dangerous than I thought. She doesn't just use the language of Colchis. She lived there.”

Etta turned to Diana abruptly. “You don't mean... You _can't_ mean?”

“I am young by Amazon standards only, Etta. And, yes, she is immortal. She promised that immortality to Barbara Ann and made her a bloodthirsty monster instead.”

“So, she is _that_ Circe? Immortal witch? How do you defeat her?”

“I don't know. I will have to find out.”

They watched Peggy, who had finally noticed them standing there, watching them. The young woman waved, her eyes fastened to Diana.

“I think she likes you,” Etta said and Diana reluctantly waved back, smiling.

“She doesn't know me and she's better off for it.”

* * *

In 1941 the third recruit of Project Rebirth died, after his body rejected the serum. 

“We should stop,” Erskine told her.

She was inclined to agree, but she knew that the American army wouldn't be easily convinced. “There are more volunteers. They all know the risks.”

The doctor himself hadn't ever stopped looking for young men he thought could be trusted with the power the process would bestow on them. “I won't pick another man to die before I'm sure it will work.”

“You're a good man,” she said and squeezed his hand. 

“Have you seen this, Agent Carter?” He handed her a newspaper.

There were two blurry black and white pictures on the front page. A photographer had tried to photograph a battlefield in France.

The title read: _The Wonder Woman revealed_. 

Peggy stared. She could make out bare legs and what looked like boots, but in a style she hadn't seen on any battlefield. Curls were flying behind the form, but the rest of the body and face were blurred that it was hard to make out much detail.

“Easily deflecting bullets,” read one caption.

“Fighting a monster right from the pages of horror magazines.” A humanoid form that looked like it was covered in fur could be seen, the face a distorted visage of cat like features.

Peggy shuddered. “Did they make this in a lab.”

Erskine shrugged. “Do you think she is the first super soldier? Something we are trying to achieve and it already exists?” He pointed at the blurry form frighting the monster. “Whoever made her, did a better job than I did.”

“We couldn't agree more,” a female voice said from behind them and both of them whirled around. A woman with lush violet hair and blood-red eyes, wearing a revealing, flimsy green tunic stood there like she had never been anywhere but here. But there was no way she could have walked in through the only door in the room, because that was right in front of them where Peggy would have seen her.

There was no time to ask the question.

Peggy had the impossible thought: “Is this _her_?”

But then the woman laughed. “No, dear child. I am not your Wonder Woman.” And as she said it she snapped her fingers together and the paper caught fire, going up in flames and vanishing into nothingness faster than either of them could react. Startled, Erskine jumped back, but Peggy had her hand on her gun. She aimed and fired in quick succession, but the bullets fell to the floor with a clattering sound. 

The strange woman only laughed, delighted with her failed attempt.

“No use, my sweet. A gun is no match for a god and my soul has been Hecate's since the age of heroes. You won't kill me. But you have fire, little girl. I could make use of you. But no time for that now. Perhaps one day, when you lie dying, you'll think of me and beg for eternity and if you're lucky and I can use a pawn at the time, I might hear you.”

Then she turned to Erskine, her red eyes turning a darker shade.

Peggy fired the rest of her rounds, but none of the bullets made it past the unseen barrier the sorceress had erected around herself. With a flick of her wrist the woman sent Peggy flying across the room as if she were nothing. With a painful crack she crashed into the wall by the door, hitting her head hard and losing the grip on her gun. Blood ran down her temples and she groaned.

She tried to look up, but her vision was blurry. 

The impossible woman had Erskine by the throat. He didn't move even though Peggy called his name over and over again, brokenly. What was happening? What the hell was going on here?

There was nothing she could do as the woman leaned forward and whispered foreign words in a guttural language Peggy had never heard before. Then the witch kissed the doctor on the mouth.

The man's face contorted; he cried out in fear and pain.

The woman laughed and Peggy, transfixed and scared, couldn't look away, as in front of her eyes Erskine turned into a huge pig.

The woman laughed louder, blowing Peggy a final kiss, before she vanished in front of her eyes like smoke.

The room started to spin and she could no longer keep her grip on consciousness.

* * *

General Phillips didn't want to believe her, but soldiers on base had seen the woman too. She had pressed information from men around the camp, had left two of them transformed too, before she had attacked Erskine.

“Pigs?” Phillips asked incredulously. “Are you kidding me? What happens next? A white rabbit wants to know the time?”

Peggy was still out of it and she felt like throwing up, but in a pen across the room the pig that had once been Erskine moved around in agitation. 

“This is the end,” Phillips declared. His face was the color of ash.“No doctor, no super soldier and now you are telling me the Nazis work with witches, who can do this?” 

“There may be a chance,” she said weekly. “We need to find her.”

“The witch?”

“The Wonder Woman.”

* * *

She called Etta from a phone at the village inn. She was back in the Netherlands for now, trying to find a place to rest where she wouldn't be a danger to the people around her. “Etta,” she said as soon as the call was connected. “I saw Barbara Ann.”

“I've heard.”

“No, I mean today.”

From the other end she was met by silence. 

“I'm sorry, Etta.”

“How far gone is she?”

“She recognized me today. The lasso compelled her to remember. For a moment she was there. Her true self and she asked after you.”

Etta was silent again. “She won't come back, Diana. Give it up. I have to move on.”

“Don't give up, please. This is Ares, this is Circe, this is the bloodthirsty god possessing her. I'll bring her home, I promise.”

“Diana...”

“I heard about Circe and Project Rebirth.”

“Nobody is supposed to hear about these top secret things. How do you always know what's going on?”

“Oh, Etta,” Diana said. “The Ares Cult is singing it across Europe so I'll hear about it. They are waiting for me.”

“Why? Diana, why are they waiting for you?”

“Blood of a god,” she said softly. “I scare Circe, but I'm also the sister of the god she wants to resurrect. My blood may be what she needs to free my brother from the underworld. My body might make the perfect vessel. I'm not sure she knows herself.”

“Underworld, Diana! This gets more confusing with every little thing you say.”

Diana laughed. She had found traces of Circe wherever she went, and she had finally come to understand that Circe carried the soul of an old god and hoped that Ares could be bound to another body in the same way. The goddess Hecate had possessed Circe eons ago, giving her power and helping her survive over the ages along with her. Circe must be thinking that Diana would be a good host for the soul of her brother, Ares.

Of course, Diana had no intention of becoming the god of war to stand at Circe's side.

“There's something else, Diana. Peggy is looking for you.”

“For me?”

“Not exactly. She's not looking for Diana – but the Wonder Woman. She thinks you're the hero we need.”

The hero they needed and deserved. That was what she was trying to be, but she had made a conscious decision to do it on her own. Her mother, her aunt, her tutors and sisters had prepared her for her role in the world. She was going to protect, but she was going to do it without endangering friends. “I'm not going to reveal myself, Etta. Peggy shouldn't be looking for me. She is drawing the wrong kind of attention. It's dangerous.”

“More dangerous than what she does every day? I fear there's no stopping her whatever I say... Persistent ting, isn't she? Reminds me of someone, who can be very single minded when she thinks she knows what's best for everyone. Who might that be? Oh, wait I know – and so do you.” Etta chuckled. “This is my warning to you, Diana. Agent Carter has made up her mind and she's backed up by at least one general with weight to throw around. She is following every hint that might lead her to you and she's not stopping.”

Diana sighed. She was fond of persistence, but not so fond of the problems this might cause in the future. “She'll make herself a target, Etta. She's not the only one who wants to find me.”

“She thinks we need someone like you to win the war, and she isn't exactly wrong there, Diana.”

It was her turn to be silent. “Stop her, Etta.” She hung up, before there was a reply.

Determined to stay out of sight, Diana left the village that night, not telling anyone where she was going. She could stay out there in the woods on her own. She did not want to leave traces for Peggy to find. She had lost Steve Trevor. This time she would stop Ares alone, as was her duty as an Amazon.

* * *

“War changes people, Diana,” her mother used to say, “be glad that you have never witnessed it up close.”

And she remembered her aunt Antiope looking at both of them sadly when she said: “Listen to our queen, princess. Enjoy your peaceful life.”

Diana had been too small to realize the “while you can” had been left unspoken. But it had been her aunt who had taken it upon herself to teach her all she needed to know to fight alongside her sisters, if ever there was reason again to fight. Antiope had known and forced her mother to face the fact that one day it was Diana's turn to go to war.

Maybe her mother and Antiope and Phillipus and Melannippe, perhaps all her sisters had known, that one day Diana would need to fight alone – no Amazons at her side at all who would have her back.

Her first mission had been easy and straight forward and she had single-mindedly pursued it: destroy Ares before he could destroy humanity, before he could tip the balance of peace and war in his own favor. It had been simple and straight forward, and yet she hadn't known what she knew now: that she had been kept in the dark about many things to keep her safe, to keep her focused, to keep her hidden.

Would she have saved Steve if she had known more about herself – or would Ares have found her sooner and killed her, before she'd come into her full power?

She would never know.

What she knew was that nobody had prepared her for the cat and mouse game that was her life in military intelligence. She'd spent a decade learning all about secrecy – and now it seemed she was facing the culmination of the second part of her story.

Diana Prince had been a good agent, helping to preserve peacetime while it lasted.

She hadn't been good enough to stop the rising of another war, but she had learned what she could from it.

And now, ironically after she had revealed herself to be the Wonder Woman, she felt like she was playing the most complicated game of cat and mouse imaginable. And her life as Amazon princess had not prepared her for this – her life as agent had. She was being hunted by the Cheetah, hunted sometimes by Circe herself and in turn she was looking for any hint of them. At the same time she was avoiding a feisty young woman, who meant her no harm, but who she feared would get herself killed if she meddled with powers she didn't know existed.

Diana slipped back into camp regularly, trying to get information about German movements and about the rumors that were even more important: The clawed monster who was hunting for allied soldiers and spies. Gruesome stories were circulating about dismembered bodies and men who had been torn apart by wild animals.

Barbara Ann was losing touch with what little was left of her humanity a little more each day.

Twice Diana ran into Peggy and tried to stay out of sight.

Today Peggy caught her for the third time and she wasn't quick enough in turning away. 

“Agent Prince!”

Peggy nearly ran to her when Diana turned. She looked clean and healthy and was wearing a leather jacket of the sort worn by pilots. 

“Agent Carter,” Diana said cautiously and smiled. “You look well.”

“Thanks to some of the tricks you taught me.” The young woman smiled, excited, her curls bouncing over her shoulders. She lucked lush and perfect and Diana could feel something in herself soften.

Peggy was a beautiful young woman and she was following her own chosen mission. It wasn't her fault that Diana had chosen the path she was on for herself.

“I hear you are hunting stories?”

“Oh,” Peggy said and her eyes glowed. “They're not stories. The Wonder Woman exists. I don't know why she doesn't join our fight officially, but she's the true hero of this war, maybe of both Great Wars. Can you imagine?”

She tried to smile.

It seemed to be successful, because Peggy asked: “Will you join me? I haven't eaten yet.”

Diana had the distinct feeling that she should leave, but Peggy seemed sincerely pleased to see her and Diana had missed more personal human contact. She'd been on her own for too long.

She let Peggy lead the conversation for a while, watched her eat, nibbling on some rations herself. 

In moments like these she realized how much she missed home, how much she missed her sisters. It wasn't always easy doing things alone.

“You haven't heard of the Cheetah?” Diana asked directly, after she'd realized that Peggy had successfully traced pretty much all of Diana's movements of the past month. “You should be careful. It sounds like she is a real threat.”

“I thought the monster was a myth, but it isn't,” Peggy agreed. “I think it was created by the Nazis to kill the Wonder Woman. Do you think it's possible? It seems whatever it is, it's tracking her.”

 _Smart_ , Diana thought. “I think everything is possible. We live in the worst times.”

“But what would make someone create a human-predator? They say it looks like a woman with the head of a lion. Word I never thought I'd speak.”

“Cheetah,” Diana repeated. “Fur and tail too. In fact I am one of the agents tracking her.”

“Her?”

She shrugged. In her head the monster was still Barbara Ann.

“We should exchange notes,” Peggy suggested. Excitedly she took out her notebook. But by then Diana had realized Peggy was glad for her company, was glad to see Diana. She had felt the sweet pangs of mutual attraction before and she recognized the look in Peggy's eyes.

It made her smile; she felt flattered and admitted she was not at all uninterested. Under these circumstances it was just a bad idea to pursue anything. 

“I have to go,” she said abruptly, cutting their conversation short, and got to her feet. 

Peggy followed her out of the tent and to the car that Diana had left with the other cars.

“Be safe, please, Diana. I've seen so much and not all of it can be explained. I know... You've been in this line of work for longer than me, but I... Be safe, all right?”

She had the car door open already. “Be safe, yourself,” Diana told her, her heart aching with the never forgotten pain of Steve Trevor's sacrifice. Impulsively, and because it was what her culture had taught her about love – that love was the only power that mattered - she leaned over to kiss Peggy right on the soft, red lips, before she slipped into the car and drove off without pausing. 

In the rear view mirror she could see Peggy touching her lips as she drove away.

“In war, any weakness will be used against you,” Antiope warned from the depth of Diana's memories.

But her mother's voice reminded her: “Never fight against love, fight with it. Cherish it in your heart and led it lead your strikes. You'll always remember how important it is to protect then.”

“You are both right,” she said out loud. “That's why I'm staying away.”

She knew, Peggy was too determined to quit her search for Wonder Woman. The determination was admirable and filled Diana with a prideful fire. If not for the war, she would have allowed Peggy to lure her back to her tent and exchanged more kisses.

Right now, there was too much at stake though – and Diana wasn't sure she'd be ever read for that again.

* * *

Peggy was not the kind of person who liked to admit it, but her nerves were frayed. Ever since the witch with the purple hair had taken her by surprise and transformed Erskine into an animal in front of her eyes, she had been nervous. It had been hard to find rest. She did constantly feel the need to look over her shoulder. How did you feel secure anywhere when your enemies could just appear behind you at any second? What kind of world was she living in? As if this war hadn't been enough, now there was magic that allowed witches to walk through walls and transform people into animals.

She avoided being alone when she could although she had a feeling that no amount of company would protect her when the witch decided to come for her. So even more than being by herself she avoided standing still. She was constantly moving, trying to be gone before anyone could track her down.

One day, she hoped she'd find the Wonder Woman and have a fighting chance. 

_I have to find her. Whoever she is, she might be our only chance._

Good men had died trying to give them the super soldier, but what would a soldier with superior strength and reflexes have done against witchcraft? He would have ended up transformed into a pig or a cute lab dog. And how strong was this Cheetah who seemed to be wherever Peggy went? Would a super soldier have stood a chance against the human predator?

Was she being hunted or were she and the predator both looking for the same thing?

She had chosen the small inn, because she didn't want to draw attention, but all day she'd had the terrible suspicions that someone was watching her, as she asked people about the woman who had saved the village from attack two weeks ago. 

Many people had been tight lipped with her, reluctant to tell the story or give any information, like the Wonder Woman had made them promise not to reveal too much.

She thought about that in the silence of her room. Was her Wonder Woman aware she was being followed by Peggy? Or were their enemies also looking for her?

It was likely and Peggy understood why she was being cautious. 

A noise got her attention and she was on her feet instantly, scared.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she nervously looked around half-convinced that yet again she'd be assaulted by the witch. But she was alone.

The realization didn't do much to lay her fears to rest.

To feel safer, she put her gun on the table, where it would be in reach, and went back to writing her letter home. She could only give Michael the barest details of what she was doing out here, but she knew her brother was smart enough to read some of it between the lines. One day, maybe, when all of this was over and she'd have survived, she would reveal to him what kind of missions she'd been on and what kind of danger she stepped into, because he had set her on the path to a more adventurous life.

Fondly, she thought about the face he would make when she finally got to tell him. 

_I know you really saw her,_ she had written back to him after his first letter. _I know she's really out here somewhere, saving people every day. I want to see her with my own eyes, too. One day I hope I will._

This time she wrote about the village that had been saved and the stories about their wonder that were becoming common knowledge among the allied forces.

Thinking of home calmed her down a bit. Sometimes it was good to remember what you were protecting. 

She slept for a few hours without waking in a cold sweat.

The next morning she decided to take a car and drive on. It had become clear that there were no more stories to extract here and her elusive wonder had already moved on to the next battle. It was hard to keep up with her, and although Peggy had still trouble believing that a human being could fly without the help of a plain, she was beginning to think there must be something to the rumors. Or how was it possible that her target moved so easily from city to city, country to country and appeared on both sides of the front line at any given moment.

She marked down the last hints she'd followed on her map, packed her bag and drove out of the town.

There were no new leads to go on. She had no idea where else to look for her target and right now it seemed best to head back to camp for a while, until news came in.

She had barely made it out of the village though when suddenly with a loud thunk her car was hit from above. There was no explosion. It was the distinct sound of a body hitting the metal at high velocity. Frozen in shock she nearly failed to swivel the car out of the way, but keep it on the road. She thought a deer had jumped right into the car, but then a louder thunk told her something really was on the roof of her car and what kind of deer came from above? Scared she stepped on the accelerator. The car picked up speed easily, but whatever had landed on top of the car was still there, moving, holding on. She could hear the uncomfortable sound of something scratching the metal and then the roof gave and claws appeared in her field of vision, peeling the car roof away like it was paper.

Terrified and realizing what must be on top of the roof, she screamed.

A human hand, covered in fur but with the long sharp claws of a big cat, tried to grab for her and she ducked, nearly loosing control of the car.

She braked sharply, making the tires screech terribly. The thing on the roof was unable to hold on and was thrown over the hood of the car onto the road where it gracefully came to its feet. Just as she had heard, it was the shape of a woman, but she had the fangs and fur of a cheetah.

 _A tail_ , she thought, her breath catching in her throat and it felt like a rug had been pulled from under her feet, when she saw the appendage flick nervously. This too was real. 

“Where is she?” the beast woman hissed. “You've been tracking the Wonder Woman. We know. Where is she?”

 _Wouldn't I like to know,_ Peggy thought with the edge of panic rising in here and she started up the car again to run the thing over and get the hell out of here, slipping one hand into her bag to reach for her gun, but with a jump the beast was at her car door and ripped it off. Peggy didn't even bother to aim as she shot at the thing that dove out of the way much too fast. 

“What the hell are you?”

“I am the Cheetah. I eat little girls like you.”

“Blood hell,” Peggy cursed, when the claws came for her again and she realized the fangs were barred to rip her throat out. She ducked out of the way just in time.

“You can live, if you tell us where she is.”

“I don't bloody know.”

“Ohhhhhh,” the Cheetah hissed like she found that funny. “Elusive princess, elusive goddess. Always hiding herself away. You don't know.” 

The animalitsitc laughter was a terrible sound.

Peggy was pulled from the car. She felt her jacket rip, cried out when claws buried themselves in her shoulder and took another shot from up close.

The beast took the bullet to the leg and growled, the pain only serving to make it more angry, stoking the blood lust.

This was it.

_This is how I die._

She stared into the animal eyes above her and saw her death coming, open-eyed. A flicker of gold surprised both of them and as quickly as the beast had been on her, it was dragged away. The Cheetah dragged Peggy, painfully, with her for a few feet. She ended up with teeth marks in her shoulder.

“Enough,” a strong, accented voice ordered and it seemed familiar. “Barbara Ann, you are not a monster. Stop this madness.”

“Finally,” the beast growled and glowered and Peggy realized she had been caught by a thin golden rope that shone with an unearthly light. “Your brother longs to meet you, princess.”

“It will be a long time, before any of us will come face to face with the god of war again. He's dead, and he can't have my body to rule this earth.”

“Ahhhhh,” the Cheetah hissed. “You know?”

“That I'm supposed to become his vessel? Yes. But I won't.”

Peggy scrambled up to see better. And there on the other side of the beast stood the woman. She looked exactly like Michael had described her with her long black hair and the ancient Roman or Greek armor. Her arms and legs were bare and Peggy blushed a bit at such a display of perfect limbs.

“Wonder Woman,” she whispered.

But the woman was too busy to pay her any attention. 

“The lasso of truth compels you Barbara Ann, remember who you are. Remember who you were. Remember Etta.”

Pressing a hand to her bleeding shoulder Peggy understood that she was witnessing a different kind of fight now. The Wonder Woman was trying to break the spell that had been cast on the monstrous woman... Or it least it sounded like it.

“Why do you think Circe led you to that temple? Are you immortal now? Did she give you what you craved for.”

“No, noooooo,” the thing hissed. “She promised. She will hold her end...”

“Do you believe it?”

“Just a taste of your flesh...”

The Wonder Woman laughed. “Oh, Barbara Ann.” She sounded so sad.

There was no mistaking the laugh, the accent, the voice... It hit Peggy right at the core and when she finally caught a look at the woman's profile, she knew that she had known the impossible woman all this time. She'd been hunting Diana.

Had dreamed of her in a wholly different context.

Had yearned to see her again.

To feel another soft kiss pressed again her lips.

Her mouth went dry as she perceived Diana now, so bared to her gaze, so fierce and strong, holding the lasso in one hand and the sword in another.

It was the image of the warrior angel her brother must have seen.

But then Diana let the sword fall.

“We're friends Barbara Ann. Think of Etta. Think of your love for her and her love for you. Remember that. It's more important than anything else. Don't tell me the blood lust is better.”

The beast hissed and Peggy wanted to cry out to Diana to not let her guard down, but the thin material of the lasso held the beast and she watched awed as Diana wrapped the beastly shape into an embrace. 

“My poor friend,” she said, “what has Urzkartagans given to you? Is this your reward?”

“Blood lust,” the monster whined and she sounded like she was in pain. “Service.”

“You're the avatar of a blood thirsty god who once had a mission and now is nothing but a pawn in the game played by Circe and Ares.”

“Circe. Wants Ares to live,” the beast hissed and she was struggling. “Etta. Diana.”

“The lasso is helping you remember,” Diana whispered and she was still holding the thing wrapped in the strongest possible embrace. “This isn't you. You can break your own curse, if you reject the god who posses you. Help me save you, Barbara Ann. Do it for Etta. Do it for love, my friend.”

And the impossible seemed to be happening. 

Tears were falling from the eyes of the murderous cat beast, a sob wrenched free from the furry chest and it sounded more human than anything Peggy had ever heard.

“What have I done? Diana, what have I done?”

“Fight it. You are stronger than it. You can be Barbara Ann again, my friend.”

The Cheetah wailed somewhere between hurt animal and wronged woman. Diana held her, immobilizing her, but also shushing her, speaking soft words in many languages as the beast started crying, and suddenly, suddenly - Peggy didn't even catch when it started – claws became finger nails, fangs became teeth and fur turned back to human skin.

“Never forget that you are loved, Barbara Ann. It's the greatest gift and the only power that can break any curse. You will always be the avatar of a sleeping god, but you don't have to be controlled by it. Only you can make your choices.”

When the woman started crying against Diana's shoulder, Diana gathered her up and stood, carrying her, cradling her carefully against her chest. Peggy gasped in awe at her renewed display of strength. This was her Wonder Woman, the woman she'd been looking for across the battle fields, across Europe. And here she was: magnificent and strong and more beautifully than anything she'd ever seen. 

Diana.

Maybe Peggy was crying; whether it was because of the pain or the relief or the awe, she couldn't say.

And then Diana smiled at her and nodded – and the next moment she had launched herself to the skies and was gone, leaving Peggy sitting on the road, hurt and bleeding and too stunned to move.

* * *

Diana left Barbara Ann with Etta, not saying a word as she delivered the other woman into her former lover's custody. It was her strong feeling that Etta had the right to decide what to do with Barbara Ann who had cried until they were close to London, slowly realizing what she had done and how many lives she had taken.

Etta just nodded at Diana, sad herself, but holding her head high. She would be the best person to help Barbara Ann and also the best person to decide what to do with her. She _had_ betrayed them, _had_ killed.

Without even a goody-bye – understanding that this moment was a moment shared between two people – Diana launched herself back into the air and went back to the main land. She took down a German bomber over the channel, then launched herself into an artillery fight she came across.

She wanted to clear her head and fighting gave her some clarity of mind.

This fighting wasn't over yet, but she had proven that even the Cheetah could be redeemed. Maybe the same was true for Circe, but if it was, it would be a long battle to get her too see it. Circe had had millennia to forget what it was to be a human without godly power, lonely and above anyone else.

Silently, Diana slipped back over the clouds before any soldier could thank her.

She vowed never to forget her upbringing, never forget her mission and never forget what Ares had never learned and Circe had forgotten. Humans lived short lives, were vulnerable and eternally locked in a fight with their own light and darkness. But they loved. They were worthy of her protection.

She knew how not to forget.

She needed to allow herself to love again.

Easily she landed on a windowsill somewhere in a French town and let herself in quietly.

Peggy had a gun pointed at her head, her eyes wide, but Diana raised her bracelets as quickly. “You can shoot,” she said and smiled. “You'll discover it's not that easy to actually hit me.” And in truth she wasn't even sure a bullet could pierce her skin so easily. She'd never put it to the test.

“Diana,” Peggy breathed and let the gun fall from clammy fingers. “I thought for a moment...”

And then she launched herself forward to kiss her, clung to Diana like she was a lifeline.

Careful, not to jostle Peggy's patched up shoulder, not to crush her, she wrapped her in a lose embrace and finally allowed herself the comfort of a real kiss. “Peggy Carter,” she whispered. “Persistent and brave. It seems you found me.”

“Wonder Woman,” Peggy whispered back. “You saved my brother Michael, and you taught me hand to hand combat...” She laughed, like she still couldn't believe it. “You fly... Like an angel.”

“Not an angel.” She shook her head.

“I have so many questions,” Peggy breathed, but her fingers explored the armor, found that her hands could easy slip between the folds of leather to reach for Diana's legs – and between. But she held back, stroked a hand carefully along the soft skin of her thighs and kept it there.

Diana sighed. “I'll answer,” she promised. “I'll tell my story to you, but first...”, she whispered close against Peggy's ear and picked her up like she weighed nothing, “let me show you how the women of my home greet each other after battle.”

Peggy's squeaked and her eyes went wide and then the brown eyes flooded with lust. “Tell me all about it then.”

Diana smiled.

She was ready to begin something new and let someone share in her battles from now on.

Peggy had found her. But she had also found Peggy.


	2. Epilogue

Diana put on her best dress, before she left the hotel with the album of pictures under her arm. Last night she had come back from Europe and stopped by Gotham for a dinner with Bruce. The Justice League was keeping in close touch these days.

But they - all of them - had their own lives and their own little secrets.

She wondered how dangerous those were Bruce hid from them under mansion or those that Clark hid behind the sweetest smile.

Hers were all complicated and precious.

She picked up flowers before she called a cab and let herself be taken to an address in Brooklyn. As always there was a spring in her steps when she made her way up the stairs.

"Ms. Prince," a young nurse said, when they passed each other in the corridor, "it's always so nice to see you."

Diana smiled and nodded at her. There was only one place she wanted to be right now.

"She's here for Ms. Carter," explained the nurse to one of he younger ones. "Her aunt, I think. Lovely young woman. Always comes to visit the old lady."

The lie hurt. It felt like she was disavowing Peggy every time it happened.

With the album under one arm and the flowers in the other hand she finally stepped into Peggy's room. Peggy was lying down, but when she saw Diana her old face lost all wrinkles for a blessed moment. "Diana," she said, her voice thin and shaky. "There you are, princess."

"I'm sorry," Diana said and brought the flower over to the bed. "I'm late again. There was some business in Gotham." She smiled down at Peggy and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

"Always late," Peggy admonished, but she caught Diana's hand in her own spindly one and pulled it close to press a kiss to the back of it. "But there you are. Beautiful as every."

Diana smiled. Every day was precious. That had always been true, but now it was truer than ever before.

"Don't look sad, princess," Peggy whispered. "I've had the best of lives. And such an adventure." Her eyes turned to the window, looking to a far away place of memory.

"Director Carter," Diana said softly and pulled a chair closer. "A good live and the best adventure."

"Did you bring it?"

Diana pulled up the album.

In Peggy's room there were no photographs, no pictures of family and friends and lovers adorning the walls. Some secrets still had to be kept even now that her life as head of a spy organization had come to an end.

"Show me, darling."

Diana opened the album.

There they were on an old black and white - mostly gray and yellow now - photograph: A young Peggy cutting a fine figure in her uniform and Diana, clad in her precious Themiscyran armor, hair falling down her shoulder in wild, untamed curls, lasso at her hip and shield and sword in hand. Peggy was leaning on her arm smiling up at her with an air of relief.

"Remember that day?" Peggy asked. "I had been afraid I'd never see you again."

"I always come back to my best girl," Diana said, smiling at the memory of a day long past. "Forever true."

Together they turned the old pages, careful and reminiscent. The old woman smiled, occasionally touching Diana cheek. Diana held her hand. Memories of their decades spent together wandered past like a movie and they laughed and cried together over the best and worst of them.

Later, when Peggy was exhausted, Diana helped her lay down, her head leaning against Diana's thigh. She stroked a hand through Peggy's thin hair.

"Never stop loving, Diana," Peggy whispered. "Don't let your light dim."

"I don't want to lose you."

Peggy stroked her hand. She was afraid, restless. The lapses in memory scared her more than the prospect of death in the line of duty ever had.

"Won't you forget me?"

Feeling her chest constrict and her voice failed her, she reached for the lasso, hidden beneath her dress, lightly pulled it around their wrists. "Never, Peggy. I love you too much to ever forget."

"Thank you, my love. For staying with me, through everything."

"You found me," Diana whispered, reminding her of the old times.

"I found you alright and never let your out of my sight again."

"And I thank you for that."

She sat with her lover, stroking her hair until she was asleep. Saying goodbye would the hardest thing she'd ever done. But she could not regret the years of love shared between them.

A full life of bravery, adventure and love.

Diana thanked the gods for every day they had shared.

She would grieve for Peggy Carter as she had grieved for Steve Trevor. But she would never forget how touched she’d been by love, how the pain was as it was because she had loved so deeply and how blessed she’d been by it.

Love.

She’d never forget love.


End file.
